


Allows for nothing so innocent as Christmas.

by uncontrollablyyours



Series: my world is dust without you [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: BatCat, Christmas, Christmas Angst, F/M, Gen, bruce wayne emo boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28130718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uncontrollablyyours/pseuds/uncontrollablyyours
Summary: Christmas is for children. If you really think about it, deep down, that’s all we really are.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne & Martha Wayne & Thomas Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Gotham City & Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Series: my world is dust without you [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194788
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Allows for nothing so innocent as Christmas.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been itching to write a Christmas piece filled with all the classic Bruce Wayne angst. Mostly inspired by the line in Dennis O'neil's A Slaying Song Tonight: "The life's fashioned from pain and rage allows for nothing so innocent as Christmas."
> 
> also, heads up, got carried away with the ages and strayed away from canon compliance.

Bruce was 11. It was the first Christmas with them gone. The first Christmas in Gotham with no Wayne-hosted holiday gala. Alfred, along with the lawyers of the Wayne estate, organized donations and funding for the foundations and charities that they supported, but no party was held. Truth be told, that first Christmas with the Waynes gone left a part of the city also in mourning. Thomas and Martha Wayne breathed life to a dead city. And now they too perished with it.

Bruce was 11, and he was angry. He was angry that he had to spend Christmas alone. He was angry because they were gone, because they left so quickly, because he was alone and he hated it. He was angry because it was Christmas and he was seriously considering the idea of using the razors he managed to hide from Alfred to end everything.

Martha Wayne had always told her son that her favorite thing about Christmas was its innocence. The way children adored the traditions, and the way adults shared that admiration for a short while—even if just. Christmas was all about looking at the world in a different way for once, as if through a child’s eyes. In the eyes of being both careless and thoughtful. In the eyes of love. Thinking of others, of what they wanted, how they felt; as an adult living in Gotham, it’s a privilege to constantly look at things that way. Thomas and Martha Wayne had that privilege, and that’s what they did. They thought of others. Christmas was the time when people could pretend to be like the Waynes, even for just a while. Bruce remembers her words exactly: “Christmas is for children. If you really think about it, deep down, that’s all we really are.” Bruce didn’t understand her words exactly back then. At the time, he didn't really need to.

Bruce was 11, and he didn’t feel like a child. He gazed at the fireplace, watching the flames. Oddly, he felt a sense of envy for the burning fire before him. These days it felt like he was just an empty shell, moving around an empty manor, cold and forgotten. This emptiness often felt all consuming—and it stirred feelings of envy within Bruce, feelings he wasn’t used to having. People called him the kid who had it all, and now he had nothing. The painful part was that he was aware of all this, and he knew what that meant: the loss of innocence.

He could feel Alfred looming by the tree, trying his best to hide the fact that he was watching Bruce’s every move. Bruce would never tell Alfred this, but sometimes it hurt to have him around. It felt like Alfred always wanted to say something, but couldn’t, and he didn’t really have to say it, but it would have been nice if he did. Bruce tried not to think that much of it. Everything was already too much.

Bruce was 11, and he clutched the last Christmas gift his parents ever gave him. It was a Zorro figurine. That year, Bruce placed Zorro by his bedside every night. It was one thing to know that the manor was secure and guarded, his parents just on the other side of the hallway, but it felt good to feel safe by something that seems bigger than life. He carried it around every day, showing it to Alfred or anyone else from the help who would listen. Bruce was 11, and without a second thought, he threw the figurine to the fireplace. He heard Alfred’s heavy sigh from the other side of the room. He heard his heart beating in his ears. He watched as the plastic melted away, Zorro’s grin darkened and unrecognizable. With it, the remnants of his innocence and that of Christmas perished in the flames.

Bruce was 24, and for the first time in 7 years since his departure from Gotham, he is celebrating Christmas. For the past years of training through the different parts of the world, he had little regard for the holiday season. Bruce would like to think that it’s because of what his training has done to his perspective of things. In the grand scheme of things, what was the point of celebrating a menial holiday when you’re in the process of training for your war on crime? But he knows the dark, gnarly truth: the sometimes uncontrollable obsession, the ever-present anger… it allows no room for Christmas innocence.

Bruce hands Alfred a gift, wrapped neatly. It’s a tie, but Alfred is still amiably pleased. The Christmas tree is lit up and the manor smells of eggnog and pine. Over the years, the confusion and emptiness that Bruce felt as a child gained some clarity, although never quite alleviated. With regards to Alfred, an understanding that has grown to transcend the use of words is forged between them. When he was a kid, the frustration with Alfred’s difficulty to talk to him about _it_ flowed between them like a river. Bruce didn’t really blame him—but he was grateful for the ease that had gradually settled between them now.

Bruce was 24, young, ambitious, and struck with a commitment that he wasn’t sure of what to do with yet. That Christmas, after exchanging gifts with Alfred, he decided to walk along the snowed avenues of Gotham wearing his least expensive coat and a hat. People were still busy. Working. Exhausted. Not working. Homeless. He gazed at the East End—the snow was thick, but it didn’t entirely cover the poverty of the area. In the faces of these people, in the look in their eyes, he recognized himself—there were more than a few whose lives didn’t allow the innocence of Christmas.

Maybe it was that. Gotham was a reflection of Bruce’s own exhaustion, his own tragedies. Once more, he looked at the tired faces forcing a smile for customers. At the homeless only nodding in thanks for the spare change dropped into their cans. The difficulties that are hidden beneath the surface, that charities and fundraisers can’t help. Despite all of its filth and corruption, it was all something that he knew he was in love with. He was tethered to it, just like the way he supposed his parents were. He wasn’t sure how yet, still confused as fuck as to what he could do for the city with all this skill and knowledge he worked so hard for.

And he walked back to his house on the hill.

Bruce was 28, and he’ll admit, this is the best Christmas he’s had since he was eleven. The manor isn’t as cold and empty as it always is—in fact, it’s been buzzing with some sort of life ever since Dick’s residence. His relationship with kid was still an ongoing process, but every day it was better. Since Dick had donned the cape, since he helped him confront Zucco, they were forming a bond that Bruce never thought he could have with anyone. Dick still publicly calls him Bruce, but when he calls for him at night from a nightmare, he can hear the kid call him Dad. It lights something in his chest that Bruce can’t express in words.

“Guys, thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Dick is jumping all around, literally doing cartwheels and body flips around the sitting room. Alfred and Bruce had decided to go joint for Dick’s gift. It was a brand new utility belt that the two had been working on for a few weeks, complete with remodeled Batarangs that was adjusted to Robin’s brand and other gadgets of choice that Bruce and Alfred had come up with. “Barbara will be so jealous, it would kill her, I just know it—!”

When Bruce was tucking him to bed that night, he took out a small, wrapped box. Dick sat up instantly, a smile growing on his face. “Another gift?”

“Yes. Open it.” Dick hurriedly ripped the wrapping apart, opening the box. For a moment, he couldn’t say anything. He looks at the two frames, his finger tracing over the glass. In one is a picture of John and Mary Grayson—with smiles that reached to their faces. It was an old photo, one that seemed to be before Dick’s birth. They were young, beautiful, and undeniably happy. Bruce noticed the way Dick’s eyes started to well with tears. Together, they stared at the second picture. It was a photo Alfred had taken of the two of them. They were side by side in one of the lounging chairs in the manor’s library. Bruce remembers this one clearly—Dick was struggling with an arithmetic equation for school and he offered to help. Dick was on the verge of frustration when Alfred came in carrying cucumber sandwiches, a new favorite of Dick’s. It was unanimously decided that they have a break. Dick was smiling ear to ear, cheeks stuffed with bread, utterly grateful for no math even for just a short while. Bruce was sitting beside him, his mouth in a small and almost impish smile.

“So you don’t forget you have two families.” Dick hugged him tight that night.

Despite the light and ease that Bruce was thankful for that night, he couldn’t sleep. It was a stupid thought, but one he still couldn’t dismiss. This joy, this sense of finally getting to be okay, it felt like Christmas. It felt wholesome, happy… innocent. It felt like a step towards something better within himself. For some reason, it felt like a crime. A crime against _them._

For some moments, Bruce lay awake, lingering in the misplaced guilt. Why did his happiness feel like something he needed to be punished for?

Bruce is 36, and the manor is lit up like a tree. Dick and Damian are in matching Christmas pajamas, which Damian hates, but ultimately obliged due to Dick’s persistence. Barbara is lounged beside Dick, who is in fits of laughter over how Damian looks. Jason and Duke are playing cards by the fire, with Jason once again prompting to leave after losing for the third round. Tim is reading a book by Steph’s feet, while Steph braids Cass’s hair. Alfred is serving everyone mugs of hot chocolate, stopping by Jason and Duke to give some advice on the game.

Bruce stares at them. He doesn’t know how he got from where he was as an eleven year old to where he is now. He doesn’t know when the weight and worry in his chest started to lift little by little, and he doesn’t know if that ever will be fully gone.

Selina purrs by his side, smiling into his neck. “I can hear you having an internal soliloquy in that head of yours,” she says.

“Wasn’t aware you were a mind reader,” Bruce replies.

“I’m not. Maybe I just know you far too well, Bat.”

“It’s not anything negative,” he tells her. “I’m just… thankful. I don’t know. This feels… different. It’s been different, lately. Better.”

Selina grazes her finger across Bruce’s cheek. “I hope it’s still like this next year,” she tells him softly.

“Like what?”

Selina smiles, almost childishly. “I don’t know, really. Nice, I guess? You and I have had too many sad Christmases. I’d like to think we deserve our fair share of nice ones like these.”

Selina’s face suddenly fills with light. “I nearly forgot. One of my favorite Christmas traditions.” Bruce looks at her, perplexed. She leads him outside the sitting room.

“Close your eyes, will you?”

“Cat, what is this all about?”

“Just do it!”

Bruce does as he is told.

“Okay, open.”

Bruce can’t help but smile. “You know, Cat, you don’t need an excuse to ask for a kiss.”

Selina glances at the mistletoe now hanging above them. “Now, how did that get there?” She smiles in the way Bruce loves—one side tilted upward more than the other. “This is no excuse. This is a Christmas tradition.” She rolls her eyes. “Also, it’d be pretty fucking weird to kiss you with your children in the same room.”

Bruce pulls her in wordlessly and presses his lips to hers. She puts her arms around him slowly as the kiss deepens. When they finally pull away, Bruce sets his gaze on Selina’s beautiful face. A smile plays on his lips. He can’t help but be reminded of the times he saw Mother and Father as a kid, beautifully in love. He can’t help but feel grateful that he’s experiencing a love like that now.

Looking at Selina’s face, there is no room for guilt or worry or misplaced punishment—there is only love.

Bruce is 36, and for once, it seems truly possible for this life—his life—to allow some innocence once in a while.

**Author's Note:**

> Not entirely proud of this, but oh well. Might edit sooner or later.


End file.
